Tolkien Gleanings #143.
* Erm, about that new and expanded volume of Tolkien letters that recently arrived on your doormat? Perhaps not so complete, after “An Unexpected Discovery”…
“whilst checking the bundles of letters ahead of a researcher’s visit […] I came across an unpublished letter from the author J.R.R Tolkien to [the British folklorist] Katharine Briggs. [… The newly uncovered] letters from Katharine Briggs to J.R.R. Tolkien are part of the uncatalogued family archives and not currently available for research.”.
* New on Archive.org to borrow, a scan of the b&w book The Tolkien family album (1992). Early items I’d not seen: a picture of Birmingham’s Samson Gamgee; the frontage of Edith’s house in Warwick; the homes in Leeds at St. Mark’s Terrace and Darnley Road.
* My ideal book, being a scholar of both Tolkien and Lovecraft, but… it’s in Italian and I can’t read Italian. Urg. Tolkien e Lovecraft: Alle origini del fantastico is newly published in what appears to be series titled Historica Edizioni. There’s a listing page at Amazon Italy, which has a 28th November 2023 publication date — though Amazon thinks the book is not currently shipping.
J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft: the gods of fantastic writing. Co-founders of a genre that is both deeply ancestral and very modern. The conventional view would place them at opposite ends of the fantastic ecosystem: light and shadow, black and white, Tolkien synonymous with airy fantasy and Lovecraft with deep horror. Yet in the epic of Tolkien’s Middle-earth there is no shortage of flashes of darkness and terror, just as in the dark Lovecraftian cosmos, populated by unspeakable entities, fairy-tale horizons of enchantment and wonder are also found. By analysing their masterpieces, and the reading that inspired both men, this book aims to read the two great architects of the imagination from a more flexible perspective, one which attempts to frame and understand them within their authentic complexity.
* A new repository record-page suggests a new book in French, Tolkien et l’Antiquite. Passe et Antiquites en Terre du Milieu (2023). Probably the proceedings of the conference of the same name at the Sorbonne in 2022, on Tolkien and antiquity. Though at present Amazon France knows nothing about the book… perhaps expect it in 2024?
* Thoughts on “Hedgerows, coppices, and the economy of the Shire”.
* And finally, news that the National Gallery exhibition in Rome, “Tolkien. Man, professor, author”, has proved popular enough to spur a national tour…
“Rome will be the first stop on a journey that will continue in 2024 in other Italian cities. Conceived and promoted by the Ministry of Culture with the collaboration of the University of Oxford, under the curatorship of Tolkien scholar Oronzo Cilli and the co-curatorship and organization of Alessandro Nicosia.”
The National Gallery is said to have seen “numbers never seen before, and many young people” for the show. Even with a hefty entrance-fee. Collectors might also note that… “The catalog that accompanies the exhibition” is also said to be partly “composed of unpublished [Tolkien] materials”.